Is There Life Outside of Metal?

Etsy Metal Blog Carnival -- February 7, 2011

Tell us about other kinds of art and craft you do. What other media do you work and play with? How often do you get to create? Does it relate to or inspire your metalworking?


I've always wanted to open up a store where I would sell art and craft items and have workshops that would teach different media. That way I would have access to everything. It would also satisfy my need to keep buying art and craft items! My house sometimes feels like that store. Over the last 20-30 years, I've tried every media I possibly could.


Lately, metal has definitely taken over my life, it's so easy to combine other media in metal that it seems to satisfy most of those other needs. Adding enameling, I can paint and draw on metal, I can punch holes and sew metal together, I can cast it and use it like clay. I can create small sculptures. I have to say that I'm totally obsessed.

                  

Encaustic Self Portrait

Encaustic Photo Booth

I teach an art class twice a week to disabled and able-bodied teenagers. In creating lessons for the class, I look at other mediums and find myself thinking that this is fun! I need to do more of this. But I usually, only do it in the class. One thing that carried over was working in encaustic, painting with wax. 

From the encaustic you can see two of my other obsessions, self-portraits and photo booth pictures. I have about 40 or 50 strips of photo booth pictures from when I was in college, about 30 years ago (and it only cost $.25!). My friend and I used this as our art medium, our teachers weren't quite so sure about it. I've always done self-portraits, drawing sketching, painting and I still do them on occasion. I have Photo Booth on my Mac (I was very excited to see that!!) and I do use it frequently, with a cache of pictures waiting to be made into something. The pictures don't look quite as good, I guess that's because I'm 30 years older and that camera seems to pick up every detail! The encaustic self portrait was from a picture using Photo Booth.

Metal Photo Strip

My photo booth pictures have totally inspired my metal work. I have used them many times as inspiration. As a matter of fact, I have a whole story about it on my website:       www.evelynmarkasky.com/Site/Photobooth.html


The other thing that I do at least 2-3 times a week is sketch. Of course, that is mostly for ideas for my metalwork. Yes, I am obsessed!!


Please check out the other blogs in the carnival and see how other artists answer this question:


1. kate jones - http://www.katejonesdesign.blogspot.com
2. kathryn cole - http://www.kathryncolejewelry.blogspot.com
3. 2Roses - http://www.JewelryTutorial.blogspot.com
4. Twigs and Heather - http://www.twigsandheather.blogspot.com
5. Erin Austin - http://www.metalmusing.blogspot.com
6. Thomasin Durgin - http://metalriot.blogspot.com
7. Nodeform - http://nodeform.blogspot.com
8. Beth Cyr - http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com
9. stacey hansen - http://wildflowerdesigns.blogspot.com
10. Nina Gibson - http://ninagibsondesigns.blogspot.com/
11. elizabeth scott - http://esdesignsjewelry.com/blog
12. Evelyn Markasky - http://markasky.blogspot.com
13. Amanda Conley - http://amandaconley.blogspot.com
14. Jenny Baughman - http://ridgeschool.blogspot.com/
15. Catherine Chandler - http://catherinechandler.blogspot.com/